Many types of service providers (xSPs) may provide data storage for a large number of customers. There are advantages in terms of device management overhead to having a small number of large storage devices in a storage area network (SAN) and sharing those devices among a number of users. The management overhead associated with administering a large number of small storage devices, each assigned to different users of a SAN or the like is cost-prohibitive. Therefore, to reduce storage device management overhead, a storage service provider (SSP), or the like, may prefer to employ a small number of large disk arrays and securely allocate a portion of the disk array storage capacity to each customer rather than employ separate smaller storage devices for each customer. While instant capacity on demand (iCOD) exists for CPU power and disk storage, iCOD is not available for data libraries, particularly data tape libraries.